And Hamas announced the news eventually on Friday.
The head of its political bureau aka its leader, Yahia Sinwar was killed in a combat in Gaza's Tal Sultan while fighting the Israeli army.
Hamas announced that he is its latest leading figure to be a martyr. It added that his killing wouldn’t impact it, and it insisted on its demand: The exchange of all hostages and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza.
Hamas is correct. It is a blow, but it won’t be the end for the movement that technically had all its senior and leading members including the founder themselves assassinated.
Now let’s take two steps back.
The Israeli army killed Yahia Sinwar, the current leader of Hamas in Rafah. Even Israel did not believe the news at first. His DNA and dental records had to be tested. Yahia Sinwar was not hiding underground in the tunnels with the Israel hostages, nor he was hiding among the civilians.
He fought till the end and was killed along with two of his companions "including one whom the Israeli army claimed to kill from several months ago" in combat on Wednesday. In fact, according to the Israeli media, he and his companions were the ones who opened their fire.
The Israeli army knew about his identity only on Thursday.
On the same night, the Israeli army released a video recording of the last moments of Sinwar while fighting till the end.
He lost part of his arm throwing a stick to the drone hovering over his head in an epic ending that suits a military film. The video went viral in the Arab world and Egypt in no time
Israel successfully killed Yahia Sinwar physically but in the process, it created the legend of Yahia Sinwar, the fighter who fought till the last moment, last breath.
Arab people are wondering why that video was released.
What happened and is happening is the opposite of the level that Hamas should send a "Thank you letter" to the Israeli army. The video immortalizes him.
It will boost the fighters' morale on the battlefield making them fight till their last breath just like their commanders.
He became the first Palestinian leading figure since Abdel-Kader El-Hosseini to be killed in combat.
In fact, he is the Palestinian faction leader to be killed in combat since the 1960s. Some say that he actually once again outsmarted the Israeli regime. The Israeli army would have died to capture him alive but fate is cruel.
Just like Hassan Nasrallah, Sinwar repeatedly prayed to be killed at the hands of Israel so he could be a martyr. He said in public conferences that he wanted to be martyred by Israel than to be killed by coronavirus or a struck
He said it in his novel “The Thorn and the Carnation” which is the most viral novel in the Arab world online now.
Sinwar wrote this novel, which is mostly an autobiography in Israeli prison where he was serving four life sentences. It was smuggled in 2004 and published only to be a hit in 2024 after his death. The last paragraph was about that Palestinian fighter “that’s him”, the protagonist being martyred.
Israel did not only give him what he wished but it created a legend out of him in a way it won’t understand its implications except later in the hard way as usual.
People are mourning him, even those who opposed him and those who opposed Islamists thanks to that video.
People are remembering George Habash’s words about his longtime nemesis Yasser Arafat "We may disagree with him, but we will not dispute him."
For many, when Arab presidents and leaders as well as officials sit in their offices while he appeared fighting for his land on the frontline in time of feeling worthless in the world.
People, mostly young people are sharing now paintings and illustrations showing him in that shot in the video with that stick throwing it at the drone over his head while masked in the Kufiyah and sitting in an armchair.
Palestinian children in displacement camps in Gaza are recreating the scene on video and photos with wooden sticks, covering their faces with the Kufiyah while sitting in an armchair.
Palestinian illustrator captured this scene and made one of the most important illustrations I believe of this war.
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| Naji al-Ali's Handala makes an appearance along the watermelon and olive branch against the Israeli drones |
The owners of that Tal Sultan house are bragging that he was sitting in their living room on their armchair.
Even those Palestinians in Gaza who blame him for their displacement and misery say that they won't share the Israeli army's happiness and fake victory under any circumstances. They are the victims of the Israeli army already.
That last-moment video is now being shared with the narration of the famous Mahmoud Darwish’s famous poem “Praise of High Shadow” specifically the verses commonly known in the Arab world under the title “The Mask Has Fallen” in Arabic
Besiege the siege,
There is no other choice.
Fight your enemy,
There is no other choice.
Your arm has fallen, so pick it up,
I have fallen, so pick me up,
And fight your enemy with me,
For now, you are free... Free... Free!
The martyrs and the wounded are entrusted to you.
Fight your enemy,
There is no other choice.
Besiege the siege with madness.
The ones you loved are gone,
So it is either to be or not to be.
Mahmoud Darwish wrote that epic poem on the deck of one of the ships carrying him along with thousands of Palestinian fighters, from Beirut to Tunisia after Israel’s barbaric destruction of Lebanon in 1982. People are sharing it in the Arab world because it feels so relevant in Gaza now.
Here is a video of him reciting the “Mask Has Fallen” in Algeria in 1983 while Arafat was among the attendees. "In this way, Darwish, Al-Ali and Kanfani revived for real"
The West World will go and lecture the people of the Arab world that they should not mourn a terrorist like Sinwar but let’s remember Israel reveres its founding fathers who committed ethnic cleansing as well as terrorist crimes against Palestinians for more than 75 years.
Israel's founders and ministers are considered terrorists and war criminals in the Arab World already. It is like two worlds
The War goes on
Yahia Sinwar is killed and Benjamin Netanyahu is acting as if he already won the war. He is saying that the War will go on and actually, he is honest about that.
Killing Yahia Sinwar won’t stop Hamas or the war, it won't force Hamas to release immediately the hostages or bring Peace to the Middle East.
Killing Yahia Sinwar won’t make Hamas disappear.
Hamas and Yahia Sinwar have been a reaction to Israeli policies for 75 years.
Late Ghassan Kanafani said that bodies fall but ideas endure.
Rest assured the ideas of free Palestine, independence and militant resistance will not only endure in Gaza after Sinwar but they will flourish and yield more than one Sinwar from younger generations that are escaping genocide currently in the strip as well as in the West Bank.
The same reasons that led Yahia Sinwar to become the Yahia Sinwar still exist and will continue to exist if the Israeli government does not recognize the Palestinian rights as simple as that starting from the fact that they are equal humans
Ironically like Kanafani who was assassinated by Israel, Sinwar has won his war against the State of Israel despite being killed in a battle as his ideas spread.
Kanafani's poetry and art are living beyond him as well as the PFLP. By the way, the PFLP is alive and kicking in Gaza among the resistance groups.
In the case of Hassan Nasrallah, I must say Israel served him too in a way it could not imagine or understand. Israel made the man a hero again, a martyr after he was hated in the Arab world because of what Hezbollah did in Syria from crimes against the Syrian people in cooperation with the Syrian Al-Assad, Iran and Russia.
It is like the Israeli army ate Nasrallah's sins. Israel killed Hezbollah's co-founder Abbas al-Musawi then Hassan Nasrallah came. Expect the same thing with Hamas.
Another thing: Yahia Sinwar was not the obstacle standing against the hostage deal, but it was Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious fanatic allies.
I do not need to share the articles from US and Israeli news websites speaking on how he sabotaged the ceasefire deals.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said it explicitly this week. According to him, Egypt’s mediation efforts, in collaboration with Qatar and the United States, had come close several times to securing an agreement for a ceasefire and the release of captives but Israel’s lack of political will and unrealistic demands obstructed these efforts.
This begs me to ask if Netanyahu who rejects the two-state solution, wants the hostages to return for real in the first place. All his policies and actions jeopardize the hostages' lives.
I really want them to return back alive to their homes in a huge exchange deal that includes the Palestinian detainees and hostages above them Marwan Al-Barghouti,
It is no longer about the hostages, it is about colonialism and testing new weapons.
One day the West and the US will admit the sin they committed by giving a carte blanche to Bibi and his genocidal army.
One day the Israeli people will understand that the biggest danger facing them was not Hamas or Sinwar or Hezbollah or Iran or Arabs or Muslims, it is populist corrupted Bibi and his alt-right messianic fanatic cabinet.
We, as Arabs know corrupted military populist/ethnonationalist/alt-rights leaders very well.
I really hope they realize this soon because the Middle East can’t handle any more Bibi.
P.S. In an attempt to defame Sinwar, Israel released a blurred video showing his wife in one of the tunnels along with his kids while carrying a black bag which the Israeli media machine claims to be a Hermes Berkin or rather a bag from a famous Berkin company. Aside from the fact that the two bags do not look alike, women from Gaza "and actually from Egypt" said that their markets used to have a whole replica submarket. I mean fake Berkin replicas are everywhere in Egypt. You can find them sold on the fourth floor of the famous City Stars mall, which I found out to be a hot shopping attraction spot for Palestinians from Gaza before the war along Mall of Egypt.
That defamation attempt backfired in the Arab world as usual because Israeli officials do not understand and won't want to understand.
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